Key US base in central Asia faces closure after Kyrgyz MPs' vote

American diplomats stay hopeful that more money for Bishkek government will keep Manas facility open

US servicemen take part in a change of command ceremony in the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing at the US transit center in Manas airport, 30 km outside the Kyrgyzstan's Bishkek, on June 13, 2012. T Photograph: Vyacheslav Oseledko/Getty/AFP

A vote in the Kyrgyz parliament last month seems to have finally sealed the fate of the American base at Manas, Kyrgyzstan, with closure within the next 12 months. The transit centre, part of the international airport outside the capital Bishkek, is a key US facility in central Asia. It opened in 2011, as a staging post for flying personnel and equipment in and out of Afghanistan. About 1,500 soldiers are located there at present.

Closure of the base has been a recurrent issue in Kyrgyzstan, and it has been massively exploited for financial and political ends. On several occasions former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev threatened to end the lease, thus extracting more than triple the annual rent, from $17.5m in 2009 to $60m subsequently. But during the negotiations Bakiyev banked $300m, as an advance on aid promised by Moscow in exchange for closing the base.

So for more than 10 years Bishkek has been wheeling and dealing between the US and the Russian Federation, rivals in central Asia but partners in Afghanistan.

US diplomats are still hopeful that, if Washington ups the odds again, it may yet keep Manas. The experts are in two minds. The vote by MPs makes little sense because the lease will run out on 11 July 2014 anyway. "My deep conviction is that there is no place for a military base at a civilian airport," President Almazbek Atambayev told reporters in May. Elected in 2011, Atambayev would like to convert the facility for business use.

In May 2012 the US ambassador, Michael McFaul, made comments he soon regretted. Addressing students in Moscow, he accused the Kremlin of "bribing Kyrgyzstan" to make it throw the US military out of central Asia. Moscow has certainly found some compelling arguments to win over Bishkek. In September last year President Vladimir Putin visited Kyrgyzstan, signing an agreement that provided for the gradual cancellation, over 10 years, of $500m in debt owed by Bishkek. He also persuaded his guests to extend Russia's military presence, at the Kant base, till 2032. Officially opened in 2003, it costs Moscow $4.5m a year. Russia has promised to invest in hydroelectric schemes, too. Gazprom, which has just bought up the debt-ridden national operator Kyrgysgas for a symbolic sum, plans to invest $640m in modernising and rebuilding the country's gas infrastructure.

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde